The present invention relates generally to queries, and more particularly, to determining a query answer selection.
When a query answering (QA) system receives a query from a user, the QA system may provide one or more answers to match the user's information needs. Typically, a QA system may determine one or more answers by querying a single searcher. The single searcher may be a strong searcher in which the strong searcher may provide a single answer to the query and may not allow public access to the strong searcher's retrieval algorithm, index, statistics, or other functions of the strong searcher known in the art. The strong searcher may be a cognitive QA system, intelligent personal assistant, knowledge navigator, or an artificially intelligent computing system. The single searcher may be a weak searcher in which the weak searcher may allow public access to the weak searcher's retrieval algorithm, index, and statistics. A weak searcher may allows a user to retrieve one or more answers to the received query. A weak searcher may be a traditional search engine known in the art. A strong searcher may be a searcher known in the art that utilizes sophisticated search (i.e., retrieval) algorithms (e.g., a searcher trained over the searched corpora using learning to rank or deep learning algorithms) to provide higher quality (i.e., more accurate) answers when compared to a weak searcher. Unlike a strong searcher, a weak searcher may not have access to the answer corpora, rather the weak searcher may have access to a different, less effective corpus, or may employ simple search algorithms (e.g., vector-space model ranking).